Established in Winnipeg in 2001, Astronomi-con has grown to become the largest independently run multi-city Warhammer 40,000 Tournament in North America. Events take place in Winnipeg, Toronto, and Vancouver Canada as well as Dallas Texas whichdraw like-minded hobbyists from across North America to participate in tournaments with unique scenarios that celebrate and reward all aspects of the Games Workshop hobby!

Thanks to everyone that participated and supported this year’s event! It was a great weekend of enjoying our great hobby.

Special thanks go to Nick Itsou for all of his assistance in coordinating the setup and tear-down of the venue.

Additional thanks go to all that sponsored terrain tables. Sharing your personal terrain collection in support of the event is most appreciated. This year’s event had the most Best Terrain entries in the history of Astronomi-con. We expect that this trend will continue and look forward to seeing what you all come up with in the future!

A big thank you also to Dominic Manchisi for housing our terrain depot collection.

Phoenix Games was once again a great supporter of this year’s event, offering up terrain and table toppers. We thank Bill for his ongoing generous support of our event, and hope you get a chance to visit his store in Kitchener and mention the event.

As we conclude this event we look forward to a new edition this summer, with an eye on updating Astronomi-con and looking to bring you new and exciting narrative battles in the 41st Millennium!

Games Workshop has announced the 8th edition of 40k. Unsurprisingly it draws somewhat on their experiences with their (eventually) successful experiences re-booting Fantasy Battle into Age of Sigmar.

And, of course, a lot of people are losing their minds, preparing to rage-quit etc. etc.

One of the first things I did was read their FAQ on the new edition to get some kind of idea what they were going to do. The second thing I did was think on what this could mean – for our events, for the hobby, for my own efforts etc. The third thing I did was to call Christian – the fellow with whom I run Astro.

So – what does this mean?

Well, let’s take a (capsule) look at what GW has said. The game will be changing. This is a major rules changes that necessitates old Codex books going by the wayside. So – very strong game changes not just ‘tweaks’. GW is also breaking the hobby out into ‘Free Play’ (throw models down and shoot stuff – much like the old unbound, I expect), ‘Narrative play’ (build your forces in themes and campaigns from the 40k universe) and what amounts to Competitive or Tournament play.

I don’t expect Free Play to amount to much. By and large players like some structure. This might be okay for teaching folks, but I wouldn’t expect to see much more of it than that.

Competitive/Tournament style play – this is interesting stuff. GW is taking back the competitive scene from outsiders such as the ETC and ITC crowds. They will have their own lists designed for competitive play, likely limit over the top combos etc. This is very much going to change that side of the hobby. I expect a lot of the ‘broken’ stuff to get taken out. Those playing versus play are likely going to have to really learn how to play their armies. Broken combos will get fixed lickety split. Many very good tourney players will welcome this as it will really emphasize skill. – That is – if it turns out this way. This one – the execution is going to be very important. However GW has promised to look to the community for changes and feedback. It may take them time to get it right – but I think their hearts and minds are in the right place. They will get there – and the hobby will benefit from it.

For Astro, of course, well we’ve always been about Narrative play even while we put the aegis of a ‘tournament’ over it. From the very first Astro the crazy scenarios and the fact that people didn’t all play the same scenario meant that the ‘tourney’ style play we did was a very different experience from more conventional events. I think, at first, even we ourselves didn’t realize how much. Yet a lot of people embraced our vision.

For us – the organizers of Astronomi-con – we have a really unique opportunity. Christian and I are going to go ‘back to the drawing board’ with Astro. We are going to carefully outline our philosophies and, in the light of an entirely new system – we are going to create from Astro – which began as a ‘v3’ tournament long ago – an entirely new creation focused on narrative play, enjoyable times and crazy fun. We will still support our core philosophies of keeping everything above board and out front, crazy fun narrative story based scenarios and having people play armies which are as evocative of the 41st Millennium as we can manage. Within those bounds – we are going to do our best to create something new, cool, and hopefully totally unique – and fun as heck out of the new edition.

Change need not be a bad thing. With all change comes opportunity and this one looks to have a great deal of wonderful opportunity for event organizers like ourselves who have long had a hard time balancing the narrative and competitive aspects of play. With them neatly separated by the rules set, we can focus on what we do best and really try to create new adventures, battles, and wars in the 41st millennium.

Welcome to the New Age. Cadia has fallen. Biel Tan broken. A Primarch has risen and daemon princes stalk the stars. We’re going to take that stage, dress it up and bring your armies to it!

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We are excited to announce that Astronomi-con will return to Toronto in 2017, on April 29th and 30th!

We will once again return to the Best Western Plus Milton, the home of Astronomi-con Toronto for the past few years.

Registration for our signature event is now open! Please visit the Registration Page to sign up.

For those that had registered for The Imperium Besieged and have not yet asked for a refund, your registration fees have been transferred towards this event.
We will be contacting everyone on this list to confirm their registration status.

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Xian and I have been kicking around the idea for this event for well over a year. Once we finally committed to actually DOING it though – the development happened very fast. I guess 16 years of event running gives you at least some kind of skill at quickly knowing what is likely to work and what won’t when working together. It’s been exciting and very very cool.

So finally we consider ourselves ready – we book and confirm the space, people are talking excitedly and then we throw open the Registration.

And – in less than TWENTY FOUR HOURS – the event is half full.

It’s five MONTHS away!

Local folks are talking about potentially flying out to Toronto to play. There may be interest in a Winnipeg version too, which we would really welcome.

For a long time, it’s felt like very competitive events were all that could succeed. Outside of Toronto, Astronomi-con events have been falling off the tree, one by one due to simple lack of attendees. I’ll be honest with you – it’s been pretty heartbreaking. This event has been a big part of our lives for a long time now. In fact half the time I’ve spent doing the Games Workshop Hobby – I’ve been running Astronomi-con. We’ve seen it all, the rise and fall of Armorcast, the creation of Forgeworld, the rise of styrene models and the phasing out of metal models virtually completely. More and new races, new vehicles, the incorporation of flyers, of detachments and of formations.

It’s been quite a ride.

And through it all – the more ‘narrative’ type of events like Astronomi-con have been falling away, replaced by more ‘hardcore’ events. There is nothing wrong with that, mind – it’s not my cup of tea, but not everyone’s choice of how to play is ever going to be the same, but narrative events – there seemed to be less and less and, more importantly less and less interest.

Wow, folks. Wow.

Apparently we could not have been more wrong.

The level of support for The Imperium Besieged, the level of excitement and interest and passion – it’s really exciting. I haven’t been this excited about running an event in some years now. It’s literally THRILLING.

Thank you folks. You’ve made it a great time to be an event organizer and I really can’t thank you enough for your support, your excitement and your passion for the hobby.